


Gay Romance on the Seas of Time

by Worffan101



Series: Gay polyamory on a timeship [2]
Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV)
Genre: Ava needs love, BIG GAY WEDDING, Drama & Romance, F/F, Fix-It of Sorts, Gay, I could never permanently hurt my gay babies, Mick Rory is a Softie, Mick is a good bro, Misuse of magical diaries, Nyssa is better than she thinks she is, Polyamory, Romance, Sara Lance in a swanky suit, Sara is a gay ball of emotional issues, TW: mentions of/allusions to threats of sexual violence and childhood abuse, The Legends are Big Damn Heroes, a little 4th wall breaking, dunno if I really need to tag it but let's play it safe?, everybody needs a hug, haplessly gay Ava Sharpe, helplessly gay Sara Lance, historical bisexual character, hopelessly gay Nyssa al Ghul, hugs for all, it gay ok?, let's call this canon-adjacent, petty jabs at Arrow season 4, self-sacrificing noble idiots, seriously fuck season 4, super gay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-26
Updated: 2019-06-26
Packaged: 2020-05-19 18:14:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 16,365
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19362013
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Worffan101/pseuds/Worffan101
Summary: When Sara Lance gets drunk with Mick Rory to lament her romantic troubles (shortly after Legends 4x09 or thereabouts), Mick decides to take matters into his own hands, and misuses a magic diary to make Sara's life happier.The ripples affect a lot, and are very, very gay.Or, three hopelessly gay women all fall hopelessly in love with each other, and despite trials and tribulations find their way to each other for a big gay wedding.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [alittlelesspain](https://archiveofourown.org/users/alittlelesspain/gifts).



> hi, this is unbetaed, based on a picture, and mostly written in a late-night feverish state as a cool-down from a 150-page mammoth of a Star Trek fic I spent over a year on that dealt with some pretty heavy topics, so here, have some polyamorous lesbians saving forgotten people from their historical deaths, dueling bisexual 17th century badasses, and otherwise having gay adventures as they fall in love. 
> 
> Historical characters will get a brief description in end notes as necessary. 
> 
> This fic was inspired by the following deviantart picture, btw: https://www.deviantart.com/kinjamin/art/White-Wedding-751495836 I just HAD to write a fic for it!
> 
> Gifting this to alittlelesspain because they've left really nice comments on my General Danvers fics I wrote in the Supergirl fandom and I'm pretty sure they like the Legends too and I wanted to do something nice for somebody.

"You know," Sara Lance said, hands stuffed into the pockets of her crisp white slacks and one eyebrow raised, "if you wanted to get your ass kicked so badly, you should've just sent the Flash and Green Arrow rude notes. Would've been easier, faster, and, I don't know, maybe a bit less painful?"  
  
On Sara's right, a slim brunette in an elaborate, Uzbek-styled wedding gown stood just behind her wife's shoulder, teeth bared as she held a knife in her left hand, her right creeping across under Sara's white suit jacket to cover the blonde's left breast; on Sara's left, a taller blonde with long, wavy hair in a black tank top and white ruffled skirt rested her right gently on Sara's left shoulder, her long, wiry left arm bare as she held a pistol by her side with a steady hand. Around them, a group of superheroes held a number of heavily-armed men in ski masks, dark goggles, and bulletproof vests at bay with a variety of power-armor battlesuits, heat guns, cold guns, metal fists, shapeshifted tiger claws, and in one particular case nuclear fire.  
  
Across from Sara, a blonde, blue-eyed man in a crisp bespoke tuxedo ground his teeth. "The  _Flash_  didn't kill me and foil my plans to take over Star City, Ms. Lance."  
  
" _Mrs._ Lance, now, Damien," Sara shot back, then reached around her blushing wives to tug them closer with a shit-eating grin. "I married up. But seriously,  _Mr._  Darhk, what's your play here? Ever since Nora realized what an ass you are and called you out at Thanksgiving, you should have known she'd tell Ray about any plans you let her find out about."  
  
"Alright, so maybe I'm a bit sentimental," Damien Darhk admitted. "But still,  _you're_  the one who foiled my plans, Captain Lance. You and your 'Legends'! Oh ho ho, I've been  _planning_  the horrible things I'm going to do to you..."  
  
"Boss, can I set 'em on fire now?" Heatwave growled.  
  
"Give 'em one chance to surrender, Mick. Damien?"  
  
" _Surrender_? To a bunch of...of  _idiots_  whose sole claim to fame is boosting a timeship?"  
  
"Technically we didn't boost it," Sara's blonde wife, Ava, cut in. "In my capacity as Director of the Time Bureau I loaned it out to the Legends indefinitely  _post hoc_. Therefore there was no theft, technically speaking."  
  
"Beloved, much as I love your ability to come up with plans whenever needed, we  _are_  surrounded by men with guns," Sara's brunette wife, Nyssa, whispered into her ear.  
  
"Don't worry," Sara replied aloud with a grin. "I know what I'm doing."  
  
"And  _what_  is that?" Darhk asked sharply, an annoyed frown on his face. "Because to me it looks like you're just waiting around for something to happen!"  
  
"Not something," Sara corrected him. Then three blurs of motion swept through the room, and all of Darhk's goons collapsed, their guns disassembled or broken in half at their feet. "Some _one_."  
  
"Sorry we're late!" Barry Allen said with a grin, the blurs behind him resolving into a young black man in a yellow speed suit, and a tall, muscular blonde in a blue-and-red costume with a winning smile. "We didn't want to let Kara miss out, you know."  
  
" _Boss!_ " Heatwave complained.  
  
"What?" Sara shot back defensively. "I have Barry on speed dial for a  _reason_!  I'm not getting into a fight with supervillains at my _wedding_!"  
  
"Yeah, but what's there for  _me_  to do?"  
  
"Ah...considering the situation," Darhk piped up with an oily grin. "I, er, am reconsidering my previous position. So...how about that surrender, huh?"  
  
Heatwave groaned and flipped his flamethrower's safety back on with a curse. "Damn it! I knew using that book for this was a bad idea!"  
  
"Book?" Nyssa asked suspiciously. "What book?"  
***  
 _24 hours earlier._  
  
"Hey," Mick Rory growled, putting a turkey sandwich and a cold beer by his Captain's slumped form. Sara Lance liked her meat lean and her brewskis cheap and cold, unlike Mick who liked his meat red and his brewskis stolen, expensive, and cold. "You alright, boss? Something's been bugging you ever since that mess in Mexico."  
  
"It's nothing," Sara Lance muttered, her face still resting on her arms over the tabletop. "Just relationship crap."  
  
"Hmm. Need anything? Someone set on fire, maybe?" Mick had known Sara for years now, and while he knew he wasn't the brightest bulb in the box, he'd come to know people alright. Had to, to be a writer. Buck was  _him_ , sure, and Garima the badass but busty and lusty wench he'd always fantasized of, or told himself he fantasized of anyway; but there was a reason why so many of Rebecca Silver's fans raved about Samantha Spear from  _Heavy Thrust_ , and it wasn't because Mick had written Samantha bedding two women and an angel. There was a reason why they liked Buck's childhood friend Zap Zephyr, the cool-headed brains to Buck's manly brawn in  _Before Heat Waves: Buck's First Love_.  
  
One of the classes Mick had taken remotely with GIDEON's help had said that writers' work reflected the experiences they had. Mick knew that was true, now--and, well. Mick was a sentimental type. So if Samantha Spear found love with a hot policewoman, Mick wasn't gonna deny the character a life with the pig. If Zap Zephyr happened to find that Heaven was for real and he was going to the good place after he sacrificed himself to save Buck, then the snooty reviewers who'd called that ending "unnecessary" could suck Mick Rory's burn-scarred cock, because...  
  
Well, that scene had sentimental value.  
  
All that was to say, Mick Rory didn't like to see Sara Lance cry, and as he considered himself her friend he did what any good friend would. So when Sara shrugged and made a noncommittal reply, he sat next to her with his own lunch tray and asked, "Anything you wanna talk about, boss?"  
  
"Nah, just..." Sara hesitated. "I don't know. I think it's my fault. Everybody leaves me."  
  
"I didn't. Well, except that one time." It seems like eons ago. The fight against Vandal Savage, as little sense as that had made, uncounted millennia as Chronos--he still didn't care to think how much time he'd lost to the time-pigs. "Haircut hasn't. Pretty can't stop coming back."  
  
"C'mon, Mick. It's been, what, twelve years since I got on that  _fucking_  boat?" Sara raised her head just enough to make eye contact as she shook it. "I'm 30 years old, Mick. I've lost my sister, my dad, my relationship with my mom, my girlfriend, my second girlfriend, half my friends, Hell, I spent a year  _dead_. My ex-boyfriend's sister was drugged by her evil dad and shot me with three arrows. I was  _dead_  for a year, and woke up without a soul. Everyone I love dies, leaves me, or goes through Hell until  _I_  can't take it and leave--Laurel, Dad, Nyssa, Ava, Ollie, Snart, Hell, Jax and the Professor, too."  
  
"To the Professor," Mick toasted instinctively. He'll never admit it, but he'd  _liked_  that snooty old bastard. Stein had been a prissy wuss, but he had a Rogue's heart under all that old-man baggage, and he'd deserved a quiet retirement with his wife, daughter, and grandkid. Not being shot by a goddamn Nazi pig on some miserable excuse for an Earth where apparently Mick was dead.  _Me, a goody-two-shoes! Snart's doppelganger was full of shit._  
  
"To the Professor," Sara echoed, then drained her booze. "I don't get it, Rory. Every time, people leave me, or I chicken out. Now they're dying when I'm not around--like Laurel and Dad. I can't do a thing to stop it because that could break goddamn time. I really thought Ava was the One, too, you know? Like...I haven't been as  _happy_  as I was with her in years." Sara sniffled. "Figured  _she_ 've all people'd  _trust_  me!"  
  
"Hmm," Mick growled. He didn't know what to say.  _Once a time-pig, always a time-pig_? "What do you want to do now?"  
  
"I don't know," Sara admitted. "Maybe just...go joy-ride across time? I should go back to sleeping with Queens of France. I got Louis the Thirteenth's wife on my list, I need to seduce Marie Antoinette. And there was that opera singer in the 17th century, Julie, remember?"  
  
"Yup," Mick half-belched. That opera singer had been  _great_. Real badass with a sword, too; she'd led the boss on a merry adventure around Paris, while Mick had gotten drunk with Athos of the Three Musketeers and complained about the stupid prissy ruffles and lace that Haircut and Pretty had insisted was what men wore in the 17th century. "I liked her."  
  
"Of course you liked her, she killed an assassin sent to kill the Dauphin and derail French history in a duel and you like anyone who takes no shit," Sara shot back. "I don't know, Mick. What's even the point? If I go and tie myself down, people die. Every time." She was drinking from a hip flask now, and Mick could smell the alcohol on the air. Vodka, by the smell. "I should go back to Salem, maybe. Fuck my way through everyone there."  
  
"What's the point?" Mick asked. "That's like me saying I should go set something on fire. I like it, yeah, but we both know I'm supposed to be working to  _not_  do that."  
  
Sara groaned, stumbling over to the fabricator for more booze. Mick could smell the alcohol on her from six feet away now. "Fuck tha' shit, man. What's the point? Haha, like you said. Why should I try t'get better? All I do's break shit. Break  _people_. Like an  _aura_. Aura'f fail."  
  
"You're drunk," Mick stated. He ought to know; he's been drunk from breakfast to dinner for over two and a half years now. Ever since...  
  
 _He stayed behind_. Snart, the guy Mick could always count on, the guy who had his back from the moment they met, the guy Mick hadn't even considered could  _not_  be there, all of a sudden just  _gone_  and he wasn't coming back. Mick and Sara had taken it the hardest; when they finally got a moment to think, anyway.  
  
The boss had liked Snart, Mick realized. Maybe not wanted to fuck him, yet, but she'd probably considered it. (Had any of the Legends ever figured out what her sexuality was other than "yes"? Did it even  _matter_?) Knowing that made things make a lot more sense to Mick; not a single year had gone by for damn near a decade where the boss hadn't either lost someone she gave too much of a shit about or been straight-up killed. Sometimes both, considering the year before last, and though they'd brought Amaya back that time, seeing Snart,  _bad_  Snart, kill her like that...yeah, that would've done a number on the boss.  
  
"Damn right 'm drunk," Sara slurred. "Fuckin' hell, Mick, it happens  _every_  time. I let someone in and they die on me. Fuck, you're prob'ly next."  
  
"You wish," Mick replied, taking a sip of his brewski. "Hey. You need, I don't know, a hug or something?"  
  
She raised a cynical eyebrow to look at him. "You tryin' to get in my pants, Mick?"  
  
He shook his head. "You're not my type, boss." Well, she checked most of his boxes, but he'd long since learned it wasn't really about boxes. "Just...I don't know. Wanted to be friendly. Haircut's rubbing off on me, I guess. Shoot me if I start talking about boy-scout projects, will you?"  
  
That drew a laugh out of her. "Sure, Mick. Sure." She stood unsteadily, booze sloshing in its glass. "I'm gonna go...do something. I dunno. You...just don't steal anything worth more'n a hundred bucks, OK?"  
  
"You got it, boss." He'd already done more than enough stealing this past week, anyway.  _Serves the time-cop bitch right, I guess. She dumps the boss, I steal the book back_.  
  
 _The book_. Oh,  _that_  was a bad idea. The worst one Mick had ever had, he knew it.  
  
But...  
  
What were friends for?  
  
Had he killed Snart? Let Snart stay the same cynical selfish bastard who killed Amaya without a second thought? Had Snart killed  _him_ , even when Mick was brainwashed and crazy enough to work for the time-pigs?  
  
Mick groaned and pounded his forehead with his free fist. He  _knew_  it was a bad idea.  
  
But he got up to do it anyway.  
***  
Mick uncapped the ballpoint with a little tremble in his hand. The book called out to him, tugging at his insides--not literally, but that was what it felt like. It  _wanted_  to be used. Wanted to make his brain burn with fevered creation.  
  
The boss's quiet sobs on the other side of the door, not quite drowned out by the  _Waverider_ 's hum, reminded him of his purpose. Nervously, Mick lowered the tip to the paper.  
  
 _Sara Lance's life was happy_ , he wrote. Paused. Waited to see if it'd stick.  
  
The book accepted it.  
  
It hit him in a rush, and Mick barely held on to  _Mick_  as the book took over.  
  
Mick wrote with feverish speed, not even bothering to think. This wasn't about Mick, wasn't about Buck the space-jockey and his alien queen or his dead best friend or any of that. It was about the  _boss_ , about Sara, and Mick let the book take the lead. It was different than writing Rebecca Silver books; there, the book fueled him, and Mick had a strange sort of energy when he finished a chapter, a kind of marathon endurance of spirit despite the exhaustion and hand-cramps from writing. Here, the book slipped into his brain, body, and soul like a power cable, and the energy coursing through him was a fire, a fire that left him  _drained_ , but still compelled to write at a blistering speed. His handwriting slipped into a barely-legible scrawl, he had no idea what kind of plot the book was weaving, had no idea how long it would take or even, after a while, where he was.  
  
All he knew was that the book was happy, the time-pigs would be pissed when they found out, and he was pretty sure he'd done the right thing for the boss.  
  
Then the  _Waverider_  returned to 2018, and everything went white as time reasserted itself.  
***  
 _November 2015_.  
  
"You know what," Sara says, stopping in the doorway. "I don't believe you, Nyssa."  
  
"What?" The Demon's daughter's face betrays her true panic for a brief moment before she schools it into careful scorn. "No, I meant exactly what I said--"  
  
"That you're bad for me? That you drag me down, right, that you're bad right through and you'll never change?" The words hit like a whip, and Sara can see the impact on Nyssa's poker face.  
  
"I do not wish--"  
  
"Save it," Sara snaps. "You're not Oliver Queen. I gave up on stopping Oliver Queen from taking responsibility for every bit of suffering in the world and driving himself into miserable oblivion years ago, I won't let you do the same thing." She shakes her head angrily. "So I came back wrong from being resurrected. So you still need to find yourself, get back in touch with conventional morality, whatever. You've got time.  _We've_  got time."  
  
Nyssa laughs bitterly at that. " _Al'sahr_  will not allow that, beloved."  
  
"Malcolm Merlyn can suck me off," Sara retorts. "Look. I got into a fight last night down in Sarhad-e-Wakhan. Bar scuffle, me and some Turkmen guys from down the valley who decided to harass the waitress. Anyway, after that, this British guy in a goofy longcoat showed up. He...gave me an offer, and before this whole, being resurrected thing, I wouldn't have bought what he was selling, but...Nys, he wants me to time-travel."  
  
"Good," Nyssa replies, pulling herself up as best she can in her chains. "You deserve the space--"  
  
"I'm not going alone," Sara says.  
  
"Beloved..."  
  
"Like I said. Merlyn can piss off." Sara pulls out her phone, a bulky flip model. "Funny thing, Felicity figured how to get satellite coverage out here. So...just a sec." She types out a quick text. "OK. Will you come with me?"  
  
Nyssa lets out a weak chuckle. "Sara, I am chained and in a cage. If you would have me come with you...it would mean abandoning the League."  
  
"Fuck the League." Nyssa's eyes go wide at the harsh words, but Sara is unrepentant. "You know damn well that our happiest moments are the ones that had the least to do with this place."  
  
Nyssa can't deny it. Everything from late-night cuddling in Brazil to Big Belly Burger trips with Laurel had next to nothing to do with the League. "I can't just let Merlyn have it!"  
  
"Like Thea would let him. Or Oliver, for that matter." Sara has a point--Malcolm Merlyn's daughter's opinion of him, after finding out that he drugged her to use as a living weapon, is only slightly higher than her opinion of Congress, STDs, and Bill Cosby, and even then it's mostly lingering familial obligation that's kept Thea from trying to shoot her remaining biological parent in something sensitive. "C'mon, Nyssa. Come with me. Be free with me."  
  
Nyssa's cheeks are flushed, but she can't deny the siren song. "...alright," she manages, her voice a choked croak. "I will."  
  
Sara gives her her most infectious smile, and whatever doubts Nyssa might've had melt away. "Awesome!" Then a blur of red trailing yellow lightning hits the room, Nyssa feels tugging at her wrists and ankles, and then a  _whoosh_ ing sensation for ten long seconds, her skin feeling like it's peeling so abrasive is the air, and then she's standing in the village, down at the Afghan end of the pass.  
  
Some of the locals give her odd and scared looks, but she's more busy trying to figure out  _what just happened_  when the red blur appears again, before resolving into a slim man in a red bodysuit, Sara by his side.  
  
"Whew!" Sara exclaims with another grin. "Thanks, Barry!"  
  
The red-clad man shakes her hand. "Happy to help. Hang on, gotta go deal with something." And he's  _gone_  in another blur.  
  
"... _what_  just happened?" Nyssa manages.  
  
"The Flash did," Sara replies with a grin, throwing an arm around her lover's shoulders. "C'mon, I'll tell you on the plane."  
***  
 _April 6th, 2016_.  
  
"...and really, I have to ask, just how stupid do you think I am?" Damien Darhk, nefarious master of all villainy, chuckles malevolently. "Seriously, Green Arrow, how stupid are you people, reassembling my idol like you did? You might as well have handed me victory! I mean, Andy here sort of did, you know, but you know what I mean."  
  
Damien's audience is silent. But then again, it's hard to be anything else while being choked by his nebulous powers. Damien sighs. Really, what did he expect? He's always been surrounded by idiots.  
  
"Now, I suppose I should teach you a less--" He's about to say something about pain or bleeding-heartedness or the futility of opposing him or something else nebulously evil like that (really, it doesn't matter what exactly he says so long as it's flamboyantly villainous and backed up by killing one of the would-be heroes--maybe Black Canary), when the door freezes over. "...what the?" Damien frowns. Doors don't just freeze over like that, and even his incredibly cheap-to-film generic magic can't pull temperature control like that off.  
  
The door shatters as someone kicks it, and a motley crew of two men, a woman, and a very small person in a suit of armor with rockets attached all emerge, the men holding strange-looking guns and the woman a pair of knives.  
  
" _Excuse_  me," Darhk complains. "I'm trying to monologue here!" He waves a hand at the newcomers, but his telekinetic powers can't stop the cold ray that freezes his fingers into a heavy block of ice, and with the fingers frozen he can't block the knife that lodges itself in his shoulder, and the other heroes drop as his control over his magic goes.  
  
"...oh come  _on_ ," Darhk spits through teeth gritted in pain, and then gets punched in the face by the power-armored person, who is suddenly  _much_  larger. It's really no country for visionaries like him anymore, Darhk thinks as he loses consciousness.  _SO not fair...._


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> i'm sorry about this but they have to go through a /little/ pain and angst before they can be happy.

_April 6th, 2016_.  _Several hours later_.  
  
"Thanks for the help, Leo, Mick, Ray," Sara says as the three men trot up the  _Waverider_ 's cargo bay ramp behind her.  
  
"Always glad to lend a hand," Snart replies with a wry grin. "Let's just make sure history's changed and your sister's alive, huh?"  
  
"Yeah, fair enough." Sara can't keep a grin off her face. "Alright, you guys hit the mess hall. Rip's probably still with his family at the safe house, we'll take off for the '40s when he gets back."  
  
"Got it," Ray confirms.  
  
"You want me to save you a brewski?" Mick offers.  
  
"Nah, I got a girlfriend to wake up." Nyssa's been sleeping for the past day, having stayed awake for three days straight after the disaster at the Vanishing Point and Firestorm's near-death in the Time Masters' bomb. And one of those days had largely been spent fighting Vandal Savage. "You guys get started without me."  
  
Sara slips into her quarters quickly and quietly, but not quietly enough, it seems, to let her beloved assassin sleep.  
  
"H'bbti?" Nyssa's greeting, in Arabic, is slurred and groggy.  
  
"Ssh, babe," Sara murmurs, slipping into place behind her lover, not bothering with the blankets or even kicking off her shoes. She's beat, too, and the only reason she didn't pass out with Nyssa is that she needed to save Laurel first. "It's just me."  
  
"Oh..." Nyssa shifts as Sara goes to wrap her in her arms, half-turning to look Sara in the eye. "Your sister is alive?"  
  
"Yup, and Darhk's in prison." Sara kisses Nyssa chastely, and gives her a gentle squeeze. "Go back to sleep. We've done enough for today."  
  
"We didn't lose anyone," Nyssa realizes.  
  
"No, we didn't," Sara grins. "No we didn't."  
  
They fall asleep that way, Sara's stocky form wrapped half around her more slender lover, Nyssa's arm snaking out from under the blankets to cup her cheek. For once, they're at peace.  
***  
 _September 2016_.  
  
"What do you mean, you  _can't find her_?" Sara hisses. The new guy, Nate, grimaces involuntarily.  
  
"I mean that the rest of you are, um,  _obvious_ ," he explains. "And GIDEON's computer core was on the ropes when she sent Nyssa and Rip into the past. I've got nowhere to start as far as finding her goes."  
  
"You found me in Salem!"  
  
"Yeah, with your Satanist lesbian freethinker rebellion!" Nate counters. "That was a pretty big blip in history."  
  
" _Damn it_ ," Sara hisses with futile rage. "Damn it, Rip...who the hell designed the  _Waverider_  anyway? Who designs a space-time ship that can get taken out by a Nazi nuke torpedo???"  
  
"We'll find her, Sara," Ray promises.  
  
"Yeah, I like Knives too much to just leave her wherever," Mick growls.  
  
"Agreed," Dr. Stein adds. "It should be possible to adjust the sensitivity of GIDEON's temporal aberration detection software."  
  
"Whatever it takes," Sara demands. "We don't leave Legends behind."  
  
Nobody commented on the unspoken  _and I won't lose my girlfriend like this_.  
***  
 _August 1945_.  
  
Nyssa checks the horizon with a grimace, her mind racing through her options as she helps the shivering Manchu woman into the old Fokker trimotor. Having grown up in a hidden monastery in the Chinese side of the Hindu Kush range, her knowledge of the Second World War is imperfect, but she knows that 1945's near the end, and that the Japanese aren't going to win.  
  
"Hurry," she urges one of the women she'd rescued not even an hour ago--Japanese, this one, the bastards had been killing their  _own people_ \--onto the plane. The Fokker seats about 12, counting the pilot, and Nyssa has 15 including the babies. What she wouldn't give for Sara and the  _Waverider_...  
  
"Thank you," one of the Japanese women gasps in broken Mandarin. "Thank you so much--"  
  
"You can thank me when we reach safety," Nyssa tells her. Her situation is bleak. She can't go north; the Red Army is mere miles away now, she can see the dust from the tanks already, and there was a flyover by Soviet fighters not even ten minutes ago. It won't be long before they radio back and her plane is hit by ground-attack planes--and from what she remembers, Soviet ground-attack craft are the best in the world in this period. East means the sea, and Japan--Nyssa will be lucky if the Showa regime considers her human, and the USA controls the air by now. From what Nyssa recalls, the atomic bombing is days away. South--only the advancing Republicans, and after a decade of Japanese oppression, "comfort women", exploitation, and outright slavery in the Manchurian factories, the Republicans will gut the Japanese and their children in Nyssa's care, and let the others fend for themselves. The Chinese women, one a peasant girl by birth and the other an opium-addicted former Manchu Empress, wouldn't make it more than a few months by Nyssa's estimation; the Empress, two weeks.  
  
Nyssa climbs into the pilot's seat after the last of her charges, and grimaces again as she looks back at the former Empress. Empress Wanrong is still a rare beauty, but her skin is sickly pale from the opium and withdrawal, her slender limbs shaking and body limp. Her head rolls listlessly, her clothes soaked in sweat from opium withdrawal, the other Chinese woman holding her in her seat. Nyssa doesn't like the idea of going west--there's too much Soviet and Republican territory there, not to mention the dark citadel in the southwest of Xinjiang, but she's running out of options.  
  
"My daughter," the former Empress cries in Mandarin, glassy eyes staring at nothing. "Give me back my daughter! I know she's alive, I know it! Give her to me!" Her companion tries to shush her, her terrified eyes meeting Nyssa's for a moment before the assassin turns back to the plane.  _Right. I'm pretty sure to turn it on I have to..._  
  
Mercifully, it responds, the engine coughing and whirring to life. Not for the first time today, Nyssa thinks of her beloved.  _Sara, this would be almost bearable with you by my side..._  
  
She forces the thought of easy, brilliant smiles that warm her heart and flowing blonde locks slipping in among her own away; she has twelve women and three infants to take care of, and her best hope is reaching Tibet.  _Make it to the Plateau via the Outer Mongolia route and across Qinghai and Gansu. Ditch the plane, take a truck or wagon to Lhasa. From there, to Nepal through Kora La_. Nepal means the British, which means relative safety--unlike the other options, they won't kill any of Nyssa's charges on sight.  
  
It's a  _long_  journey, though. And the Empress is getting worse. She's already hallucinating about her daughter--a daughter that her companion, Yuqin, had told Nyssa was killed by the Japanese shortly after birth. Nyssa isn't equipped to handle this level of withdrawal symptoms while also taking care of a terrified peasant woman and ten desperate Japanese would-be settlers, all in the middle of a war zone.  
  
As the plane lifts off the ground, Nyssa sets her jaw.  _I have to try. Sara would try._  She is the Demon's daughter, damn it. She survived childhood with the League. She survived  _al'sahr_ 's coup. She survived her father's wrath, Vandal Savage, the time-assassin-- _inshallah_ , she can do this, too.  
  
"Why did you save us?" Yuqin asks from behind her. "From the assassins, and from the Russians?"  
  
Nyssa doesn't take her eyes off of the sky, the trimotor leveling off, but shrugs instead. "I used to be one of the assassins. They're the League of Assassins, based out of a secret holdfast in southern Xinjiang. I have left that life behind."  
  
"But why save us? I'm not stupid, I know we're probably not going to make it." She's moved into the cockpit, some of the Japanese women taking over soothing Wanrong. By the sounds of it, someone's letting the Empress pretend that one of the babies is her daughter for a few minutes. The Empress is sobbing, pleading for forgiveness in Mandarin.  
  
Nyssa wets her lips. "I killed many people," she admits. "The League's understanding of blame is...not always the best. Those who benefit from crimes are as guilty as the perpetrators. Those perceived as benefiting are guilty. The hand and the sword are as one." She hesitates. How best to say it? Sara would know, she was-- _is_  always so eloquent. "You are a girl from Manchuria, forced into a sham marriage by Emperor Showa's men. Wanrong has been living a sham most of her life. The others...they are only civilians. And their own people were going to kill them."  
  
Nyssa can hear Yuqin shiver as the girl remembers the scene. Women and their children, lined up and wailing, the Japanese Colonel giving a short speech about bushido and honorable deaths, the screaming, Nyssa's stolen League bow  _twang_ ing, arrows in the air, blood on bricks and wood, the Rising Sun flag stained red in a semi-coherent streak, the Colonel's corpse on the ground as his head rolled free, Nyssa wiping her sword on his pants.  
  
The fear in Yuqin's eyes as Nyssa looked back to verify that she was safe.  
  
Nyssa knows that all of that is burned into Yuqin's memory as much as her own.  
  
"I couldn't let more people die for nothing without doing  _something_ ," Nyssa chokes out. She wipes her eyes furiously to clear her vision, and the plane lurches for one terrifying instant. "I am a broken woman, Lady Li, but I won't let that define me. And, as my Beloved taught me--everybody deserves a second chance. Even me." She takes her eyes off of the sky for one brief moment, glaring into Yuqin's pale face. "Don't waste this," Nyssa demands. "Don't waste your life."  
  
"I won't," the younger woman promises her. "I promise."  
***  
 _December 2017_.  
  
"Hey, so..." Sara begins. The stern blonde, Agent Sharpe, looks over the table.  
  
"Yeah?"  
  
"Thanks for helping us with that whole, viking war god Beebo thing, Agent Sharpe."  
  
"Not a problem," Agent Sharpe replies. "And please, call me Ava." Damn, she looks great with her hair down. Cute smile, too.  
  
"I know I can be a bit of an ass, it's been a rough year and a half or so."  
  
"I'm so sorry," Ava says. "I'll listen if you want to tell me what happened."  
  
Sara chuckles ruefully as she kicks back with a beer. "We were gonna get engaged," she says, starting in the middle of things. "Nyssa and me. I had a ring and everything, we had a mission to fight Nazis in New York in the '40s, I was gonna pop the question at the after-party. But it went bad, a Nazi nuke hit the  _Waverider_ , Rip sent us all off through time to random coordinates. I got sent to Salem, during the witch trials. Nyssa--we don't know where she is. GIDEON's data was corrupted. So. Year and a half, or so. She's been gone."  
  
"Damn." Ava's quiet for a few moments. Sara understands; there's only so much that you can say to that kind of story. "I'm sorry," the blonde reiterates.  
  
"Yeah." Sara fiddles with her drink, gazing into its amber depths. "We were both finally in a good place, too."  
  
"You weren't always?"  
  
"Ha! No. When I was 18 I got on a boat to fuck my sister's boyfriend 'cause I was jealous. Thanks to his sister's evil bio-dad, the boat went down, I got picked up by a psychopath and his gang of thugs on their own boat." Sara took a drink. "Year and a half of Stockholm syndrome. The implied rape threats were the best part." Her sarcasm tastes as bitter as it sounds.  
  
Ava's eyes are dark and wet as she lays a gentle hand on Sara's shoulder. Sara should nudge her off, but can't bring herself to do it.  
  
"After that, a few weeks of panic and barely-surviving on the island. Then I got washed away again while Ollie fought a supersoldier. You know, the usual. Nyssa found me. She took me back to the League, helped me heal. But I was broken by that point. Ra's al Ghul, the Demon's Head, he offered me a spot in the League."  
  
"She forced you to--"  
  
"No." Sara finishes her beer and gropes for another from the fabricator. "She and I were in bed. The first time for her. I'd had fuckbuddies before, but nothing like her. She got real quiet after we finished. She told me not to join, to leave and forget about her. Well, like an idiot I didn't." Ava's arm is around her back now, soft and gentle. "I joined. Became an assassin. Five years like that. She knew it was breaking me. I think  _that_  was breaking  _her_ , that and knowing how wrong the League's code was. I left after Ollie's sister's evil bio-dad set off an earthquake machine in Star City. She came after me a few months later. She never went after people's families, never went after innocents--this time she did. Poisoned my sister, not fatally but still--that, and she kidnapped my mother. I'd never seen her like that. I was fucked up at that point, too, so I tried to kill myself. She took Ra's al Ghul's worst for my sake, let me out of the League and turned around to take that to her father. Not that it mattered, in the end, I sold myself back to the League for help against Deathstroke. But still. When I got killed by Thea's evil bio-dad, she brought me back. She was with me when we fought Vandal Savage in the '80s, the '50s, the future..." Sara sobs, cupping her face in her hands. "We were making  _progress_ , damn it! She was in a  _good_  place!  _ **I**_  was in a good place, too!"  
  
"I'm so sorry," Ava murmurs, rubbing Sara's back gently. "If you need someone, a shoulder to cry on, anything, I'm here for you, OK? Just a time-courier jump away, too."  
  
Sara kisses her. It's hot, messy, and sudden, Sara's arms reaching up and around Ava's, cupping Ava's head and torso, pulling her close to the shorter woman's tear-stained face. Ava tries to pull back, but Sara pushes after her, overbalancing them both to the floor. The blonde gets her hands in between them, pushes Sara back. "Wait! I didn't mean...I don't want to pressure you..."  
  
"I'm sorry," Sara rasps, pulling back like Ava's skin is scalding hot. She's crying, breath coming loud and unsteady as she rises. "I'm sorry, so sorry, I just...I'm gonna...yeah." She grabs a bottle of vodka from the fabricator and bolts.  
  
Ava sits there on the floor, gasping for breath, and stares after her, not knowing quite what to think or do.  
***  
 _80 miles southwest of Lhasa, Tibet. September 5th, 1945_.  
  
Wanrong is still in bad shape. Nyssa eyes the former Empress as the women bed down for the night; Yuqin bartered her spare robe for a doll for the Empress soon after the trimotor ran out of gas, and Wanrong is still treating it as if it were a real child most of the time. Sometimes she seems to recognize that it's a doll, and there are other flashes of lucidity, but Nyssa knows that even clean of the opium, the former Empress is in a bad state. She's already spent two days vomiting from something bad she ate, and is beginning to look unhealthily thin, but Nyssa is  _not_  losing one of her charges now.  
  
Nyssa's only relief is faith. Knowledge that it'll take months, maybe even years, for the  _Waverider_  to arrive, they still haven't perfected the temporal discriminators and it's not good for time to do too many jumps too close to each other. Faith that Sara is out there, will find her.  
  
Her eyes droop, and Nyssa forces herself awake with a sharp pinch to her buttock. They can only go so fast, with the need to carry additional fuel, the mess that is the Tibetan road network, and the health of the women Sara's taking to Nepal, so Nyssa hasn't slept for the better part of two weeks, counting the lengthy airplane journey. It's taking its toll, though. Soon, she won't be able to catch herself before she passes out.  
  
Someone taps her shoulder. Nyssa turns; it's Yuqin, and another woman, one of the Japanese. The latter is pregnant, nearly ready to give birth by Nyssa's estimation.  
  
"You should be asleep," Nyssa says.  
  
"So should you," the Japanese woman says. "Besides. She makes me wake up to relieve myself every hour. I'm not going to get any real sleep tonight anyway."  
  
Yuqin helps Nyssa up; Nyssa should resist, but she can't find the right words to reject the girl. "If Wanrong needs to be soothed..."  
  
"I can take care of it," Yuqin promises.  
  
"If you see anything..."  
  
"We'll come get you," the Japanese woman promises. Her kimono hangs limp and wrinkled on her shoulders, the  _obi_ bunched up after days on the road. Nyssa hasn't had the chance to steal some money for new clothes--a thought that would stick in her craw if she hadn't already stolen a Republican truck back in southern Qinghai, and enough gasoline to get them into the mountains.  
  
"You need your sleep, you're nearly ready to give birth," Nyssa protests. The Japanese woman waves her off with a chuckle as Yuqin escorts the stumbling assassin to a bedroll.  
  
"Come on," the younger woman insists. "I've seen how much you give for us. Time we gave back."  
  
"What will you do?" Nyssa asks, her brain hiccuping as Yuqin lowers her down to sleep. "When I get you to safety?"  
  
Yuqin shrugs. "I don't know. I don't think I can be a concubine anymore, not that I wanted that anyway. I don't know if I want to go back to my parents. They didn't hide me from the Japanese...but then, if I'd been hidden, the Kwantung Army might've punished my family. Maybe I'll find a trade to learn. Maybe join a society, like the Yiguandao or the Shengdao."  
  
"Why did the Japanese want you?" Nyssa's bones feel as warm and heavy as her muscles as she lies down, but she can't close her eyes, her heart still too active.  
  
"I was pretty," Yuqin replies. "They wanted me to bear the Emperor's children." She chuckles in spite of herself. "They didn't realize that he's biologically incapable of reproduction."  
  
Nyssa frowns. "Sterile?"  
  
"No, he..." Yuqin looks left and right, then leans in as she lies Nyssa's head on the pillow. " _He likes men!_ "  
  
"Oh." Nyssa frowns again, not familiar with the status of LGBT people in early 20th-century Chinese high society. "What's wrong with that?"  
  
Yuqin snorts. "Hard to produce heirs that way. The Japanese weren't quite desperate enough to force him, either. Only me."  
  
"I'm sorry."  
  
"Don't be." Yuqin pulls a bedroll next to Nyssa's and sits, the two women looking up at the stars. "You're not the Japanese." She's quiet for about half a minute, and Nyssa tries to slow her breathing so that she can finally sleep; decades of training drilling her into staying awake in the field is working against her now, though.  
  
"Do you have a sweetheart?" Yuqin asks, out of the blue. "You mentioned a Beloved, on the aeroplane."  
  
"Sara," Nyssa says without thinking. "We were about twenty when we met. She was nearly dead, out on the ocean. I had been sent there by my father, Ra's al Ghul. I found her, pulled her out of the water..." She stops as Yuqin sighs.  
  
"Oh, that's romantic!"  
  
Nyssa lets a single huff of laughter slip out. "Perhaps. But...yes. So it was. Fate brought her to me, and me to her. I knew nothing but the League, and Ra's al Ghul would not let her leave our mountain alive unless she swore to him." Nyssa's breath hitches. "I caused that. I forced her into that Hell. I saw her breaking inch by inch for five years, and I did not know what to do. When she left me--oh,  _allahu akbar_." Nyssa turns away from the younger woman, choking back a sob. "My  _attayir al'asfar_  left me, and I hurt her family. Her sister and mother. I didn't think--I just acted. It was wrong, it was cruel and vile and I did it all without thinking. And still she returned to me."  
  
"So quickly?"  
  
"No, after months--at first, it was only to get the League's resources. There was a man who sought to destroy her home. But she returned to me, and I begged for her forgiveness, expecting none."  
  
"Did she forgive you?" Yuqin is hanging on her every word. Nyssa lies back again, staring at the sky. How can she be so tired while sitting up, and so awake lying down?  
  
"Yes," Nyssa whispers. "I do not deserve her. She took me back, I tried to push her away for fear of harming her soul, and she  _refused_  to be pushed away. She was by my side for an entire year after she was brought back from the dead--"  
  
"One moment--you brought her  _back from the dead_?"  
  
"Not very well," Nyssa clarifies. "And it was not I who did it. There is a pool--one of several--in the citadel of Nanda Parbat. Among its hellspawned magics is the power to raise the dead--but they come back cruel, soulless things, monsters that do not recognize even the ones they love. Sara was like this, it took great trouble to cure her, or so I'm told."  
  
"Oh," Yuqin whispers. Her eyes are wide and dark, glittering in the starlight. "And after she was cured?"  
  
"She refused my attempts to drive her away," Nyssa admits. "She fought by my side, against Vandal Savage, against the manhawks, against Damien Darhk and the Nazis. Across time and space, from the days of disco to the distant future, she stood by me and loved me with all of her heart."  
  
"You love her." It isn't a question.  
  
"More than anything," Nyssa chokes out. "I do not deserve her."  
  
"No," Yuqin counters. "No, look at yourself! Look at how much you've done, how much you've given, for a dozen strangers and their infants! No, you deserve love, Nyssa. Anyone who could look at someone as pathetic as the Empress and me, or as hated as the Japanese, and risk life and limb to save us--you deserve this Sara of yours. And one day, you  _will_  see her again. I'm sure of it."  
  
"You are too kind," Nyssa whispers.  
  
"Whatever you were,  _whoever_  you were," Yuqin counters, "you are our savior now. The old you cannot be changed, just as I will never not be a little bit what the Japanese made me, but the old you is not  _who you are now_. I may be just a girl used by the Japanese for my body, but I can tell you this with certainty, Nyssa al Ghul, demon's daughter--you are our hero. A hero for every woman here, and the babies besides. We would all be dead or captured if not for you, and I can imagine what captured would mean."  
  
"I..." Nyssa rolls onto her side, this time towards the younger woman. "Thank you."  
  
Yuqin's smile is warm even in the relative darkness. "She  _is_  out there," the former concubine promises. "I know it. I do not understand much of what you have told me, but if she truly loves you so--nothing will keep her from you." She stands. "I will help Yuko take the first watch. We will keep you safe, I promise."  
  
Nyssa lies there in the darkness, staring out to the horizon, the blur of mountains off in the direction of Nanda Parbat. "It isn't only her  _not_  coming back that I fear," she whispers to herself.  
  
Nyssa sleeps poorly that night.  
***  
 _2018 (mostly)_.  
  
They slip into dating slowly. Inch by inch over several months, Ava lets herself fall for Sara without even realizing it. By March, they have a first date. Ava knows it's a bad idea, can  _see_  the brittleness in Sara's smile, knows she's still holding a candle for another woman...  
  
...but Sara's been alone for two years, and she insists she's fine, and Ava lets herself be convinced bit by bit, convincing herself that the drunken attentions of the ex-assassin were  _fine_ , falling ever deeper into the whirlpool of love that is Sara Lance.  
  
Sara loves with a ferocity and passion that leaves Ava breathless; even her team has a taste of her love, in a different way, and knows that passion, for which they gladly love her right back. The Legends are more family than team, a tight-knit unit that would fight, kill, and die for each other at the drop of a hat without question. And Sara Lance is their beating heart,  _and she wants Ava to be hers_. Ava couldn't resist even if she truly wanted to and tried.  
  
When they kiss at the end of their first date, Blackbeard's eviler ex-girlfriend dead and the Earth Totem in the Legends' possession (things got a little out of hand), Sara pulls back with the warmest, most genuine smile Ava Sharpe has ever seen.  
  
Ava is lost instantly.  
  
They have three wonderful, beautiful, precious months, Sara unfolding like a flower for Ava, every day and every kiss revealing something new and truly wonderful. They date in '20s Paris, share kisses in the Cretaceous, sleep under the stars after a mission in the Wild West. It seems as if Sara is genuinely beginning to heal.  
  
Then GIDEON picks up a new blip in time, and everything changes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gobulo Wanrong, Empress Xiaokemin, was the primary consort of Puyi, the last Emperor of China. Regarded as beautiful and clever, the trauma of having her baby abducted immediately after birth and likely killed by Puyi's Japanese handlers (said baby being a product of an affair that Wanrong had with an aide) left Wanrong with likely post-traumatic stress that, combined with her congenital obsessive-compulsive disorder and ADHD, left her terminally addicted to opium by the 1940s. In 1945, she was captured by the Kuonmitang government of China after the defeat of Imperial Japan, and died the next year, hallucinating and covered in her own fluids in a cage that she'd been locked in for months. The Chinese weren't particularly sympathetic, associating the Empress with the hated Puyi, who'd been propped up as puppet Emperor of Manchuko by the Japanese regime. 
> 
> Li Yuqin was Puyi's fourth consort, forced into the marriage with an apathetic Emperor by the Japanese occupation forces (the Kwantung Army), who apparently hadn't figured out yet that Puyi was a queer as a three-dollar bill. A teenaged schoolgirl at the time, Yuqin later divorced Puyi and managed to survive the Cultural Revolution despite harassment from the Maoist dictatorship's thought-police, dying in peaceful anonymity decades later.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Almost to the endgame here, bear with me! We just have to get through Sara's emotional issues and her ladies getting together first! :)

_Kora La Pass, Tibet. 1945_.   
  
Nyssa's first warning sign is Yuko complaining of cramps. But the women are mostly young, and tired, and pushing hard for Nepal, and Nyssa herself has what her subconscious considers more important worries; Wanrong is lucid about a quarter of the time now, finally showing a bit of improvement, but Nyssa needs to get them through the pass  _quickly_  before the strain of the high altitude drives the Empress back into her shell--or worse, the tail she's pretty sure they picked up in Lhasa catches up. So it is that nobody, not even Yuko herself, realizes what's going on until her water breaks, soaking part of the truck's bed and the slippers of several women. Nyssa stops at the sound of shouting, and maneuvers Yuko to the side of the road into a patch of wildflowers--hardly ideal, but none of them are midwives and they're not exactly spoiled for choice.   
  
"Breathe," Nyssa tells Yuko, trying desperately to remember anything useful about giving birth. She's coming up blank.   
  
This is, Nyssa knows, not a good thing in the current situation.   
  
Yuko gasps for breath in the thin air, and Nyssa curses her thought process that landed her and her charges here. She should've just bit the bullet and risked the black mountain's shadow.  _Through the pass to Afghanistan--then southwest out of the mountains to Iran._  No use resting on might-have-beens now, though.   
  
"I think we need a cloth," Nyssa tells Yuqin. "A cold, wet one. There's a stream down in that gully, see if you can't soak a bit of something."   
  
"Right away," Yuqin promises, Yuko moaning in pain as Nyssa and two of the Japanese women hold her down.   
  
"Legs," comes a voice from Nyssa's right. Nyssa spares a glance; Wanrong stands there, shivering in the cold mountain air with her wet feet, doll clutched desperately to her breast. "When I had my baby, the Japanese said, my legs had to be apart. Someone should hold them. There were straps." For once, her eyes are only a little unfocused, and she seems fairly lucid.   
  
Nyssa nods; as cruel as the Japanese were to the former Empress, she can see the point. "Two of you, hold her feet, be gentle but firm." Two other Japanese women kneel at her sides, taking Yuko's feet as the pregnant woman screams in pain. "Yuko, you must breathe deeply; slow and deep! The air is thin here--"   
  
" **WHAT DO YOU THINK I'M TRYING TO DO**?" Yuko howls in Japanese. Her breath is coming in harsh pants, her arms and legs flexing almost at random as she struggles against the pain.   
  
"Baby needs you to breathe," Wanrong whimpers in Mandarin. Yuko sees her standing behind Nyssa, grimaces, then moans in pain again.   
  
"Oooohhh ow ow damn that unpleasant dunce, I will never let him touch me again even if he survives the war!" Yuko's Japanese is slurred with pain, her teeth gritting; that she's stooping to words like  _unpleasant dunce_  in Japanese of all languages this early in the process is a bad sign. Nyssa tries to feel the woman's rippling, swollen abdomen, trying to figure out where the baby is and if it's in the right position.   
  
"Nyssa," Yuqin says from her left; Nyssa turns, and takes the wet cloth with a grateful smile. "Nyssa, we're being followed."   
  
The confirmation of her suspicions sends an icy current through Nyssa's spine. "How many?"   
  
"I only saw one--he had a veil, and was dressed all in black. He had a bow and a sword, I think, I don't think he knows I saw him in the stream."   
  
_The League_. Nyssa bites back a curse, pulling back to stand. "Ra's al Ghul has found me, then. Yuqin, I need you to take over here."   
  
"Me?" the younger woman squeaks. "I don't know anything about birthing, I'm not a midwife!"   
  
"You're all Yuko has," Nyssa counters, grabbing her sword from the truck and slinging her quiver and bow across her back. "Please. I'll defend us from the League, but you  _must_  do this."   
  
She can see Yuqin gulp, but the woman nods shakily. Behind her, Wanrong sways in place, murmuring what sounds like a nursery rhyme.   
  
"I will. But--Nyssa. Please. Don't die. I don't know what we'd do without you."   
  
Nyssa offers her a false smile, even though her heart breaks at the other woman's desperation. "I won't," she promises, knowing that it's a lie.   
  
She draws her bow, nocking an arrow as she scans for the assassins that she now knows are out there. " _Bismillahir Rahmanir Raheem_ ," she murmurs in Arabic.  _In the name of God, the gracious, the merciful_. "Let my arrows find my enemies swiftly and grant them a quick and merciful death. Let my sword defend me from the hand of Satan, let the minions of the Demon's Head fail in their task!" She licks her lips as she ends the prayer, her heart thumping in her ears as she prepares once more to take lives for what she desperately hopes is the right reason. " _Allahu akbar_."  _God is great_.   
  
She can see them slipping out of the trees now, no longer bothering to hide. They could've killed her and the others ten minutes ago, someone must want to gloat. Good. It'll give Nyssa a fighting chance at buying her charges five minutes or so with her life.   
  
"You've truly enraged the Demon's Head with your actions!" calls one of the assassins. Nyssa has an eerie suspicion that she knows the voice, though it is well before her time with the league. "And you dared to try crossing the Himalayas under our watch? You're bold, girl!" Yuko screams in pain behind Nyssa, and she wets her lips, arrow nocked but not drawn.   
  
"I have no quarrel with the Demon's Head," Nyssa calls back. Not if she wants to exist, anyway. "I am taking these women to Kathmandu, and from there to Delhi. Please do not hinder us, we only wish to travel in peace."   
  
The lead assassin shakes his head as he strides up to the road, the other assassins slipping after him with drawn blades and bows. "I think you  _do_  have a quarrel with the Demon's Head, given how you've frustrated his minions in their fulfillment of his orders." She knows those eyes. But it's  _not possible_. He isn't even born yet! "But, well...either way..."   
  
He shucks his hood and veil with an oily smirk, and Nyssa sucks in a sharp breath.   
  
"...Ra's' wrath makes my job here a  _lot_  easier," says Malcolm Merlyn, the man who killed Sara, the man whose death Nyssa dreamed of for a year, the man Nyssa hates more than anyone except her never-to-be-sufficiently-damned father.   
  
" _Al'sahr_ ," Nyssa spits, drawing her bow. "You're several decades early." Behind her, Yuko wails again as the other women crowd around her, offering support in Japanese and Mandarin.   
  
"Considering how long it took us to find you, I think I can be excused for that," Merlyn smirks smugly. "You're lucky that my  _colleagues_  in the Legion of Doom had another matter to attend to; this way, you might just last thirty seconds."   
  
Nyssa releases her arrow at his eye, and Merlyn barely gets his scimitar up in time to deflect it from its course. She swipes out with her bow, drawing her scimitar with her other hand, and  _al'sahr_  jumps back, drawing his own blade with lightning speed. "I am indeed fortunate," she hisses. "You took my  _attayir al'asfar_  from me. I have been waiting  _years_  to do this,  _al'sahr_." Their swords meet, and Merlyn curses as his feet slip on the wildflowers. He counters fast, though, and barely parries Nyssa's next swipe. "Face me, if you have the spine!"   
  
"Get her!" Merlyn snarls, and Nyssa leaps backwards, twisting to avoid the arrows that shoot through where she was. "I have nothing to prove to you, girl!" Merlyn draws his bow, and Nyssa guts one of his minions as the man moves in with a scimitar, spinning around with his corpse to catch more arrows from the assassins, but she's living on borrowed time. "I was a successful businessman, I beat the Green Arrow at his own game,  _I became Ra's al Ghul!_ "   
  
"This isn't about  _proof_ ," Nyssa hisses, parrying his first arrow with lightning speed. "You killed my beloved!"   
  
"She got better," Merlyn snarls, and Nyssa cries out as her block isn't quite fast enough to block  _both_  of his next two minions' strikes, and she goes down to one knee with an arrow in her right calf. Nyssa forces herself up, the remaining assassins holding arrows nocked, aiming for her heart, and Yuko isn't the only one screaming now. She couldn't block them all even if her leg weren't injured. "The same can't be said for you. Finish her, damn it--do I have to do  _everything_  myself?"   
  
Nyssa forces herself to her feet as Merlyn's minions draw back their bows. So this is it. This is where she dies. " _Allah yakhthek, ibn al-kalb_!" Nyssa spits it in Arabic, a sneer of hate on her lips.   
  
Merlyn holds up his hand just so he can smirk infuriatingly at her one last time. "I don't know, Nyssa--with all the blood you've spilled, shouldn't it be  _your_  black soul He takes?"   
  
She spits at him, swaying on her feet. He chuckles, and makes a chopping motion with his black-gloved hand.   
  
_Sara, my love, I'm so sorry,_  Nyssa thinks as the arrows streak for her like angry wasps.   
  
Something hits her in the back. Nyssa falls, barely catching herself on her hands. Nobody falls on top of her, but a light weight hits her back, like a balled-up shirt or maybe a doll.   
  
" _Huanghou!_ " Li Yuqin screams, voice raw.  _Empress_. Something happened to the Empress. Merlyn curses as Nyssa flips herself over, her wounded calf sending stabbing pain up her leg. Wanrong stands above her, three black arrows in her abdomen, her ragged dress soaking red with blood. She sways, topples forward, and Nyssa barely catches her. The other woman's body convulses, and Nyssa doesn't even huff with effort as she pulls Wanrong's frail form over her body, not daring to touch the arrows. Wanrong coughs spasmodically, but she manages a little smile.   
  
"I'll...I'll see her soon...won't I?"  _Her daughter_ , Nyssa realizes, the baby that's been dead for a decade and a half.   
  
"Yes," Nyssa whispers, laying a gentle hand on the former Empress's arm. "I'm so sorry. You saved me. I'm sorry."   
  
Wanrong's still-flawless face looks almost peaceful, her eyes clear for once. If Nyssa didn't know that she was on opium nearly 24/7 just a month ago, she might think the older woman is happy. "Good," Wanrong whispers. "I'll get to hold her in my arms, then. I...I can live with that."   
  
A boot steps none too gently on Nyssa's chest, and she gasps with pain as she feels a rib snap, indescribable agony spearing across her torso like a spiderweb of pain. The women are all screaming now, their children taking up the cry, as Merlyn's minions move in.  _Al'sahr_  himself sneers down at Nyssa, his bow ready.   
  
"You really are  _entirely_  too much of a hassle,"  _al'sahr_  snarls. "Goodbye, Daughter of the Demon."   
  
There's an odd  _sizzling_  sound, a shout of rage, and  _al'sahr_  is gone, his bowstring twanging off-tune as the arrow sails off into a hillock, a white-clad blonde blur hitting the evil archer with a howl of rage. " _DON'T! TOUCH! MY! NYSSA!_ " screams  _Sara_ , screams Nyssa's beloved, the answer to her prayers, swinging punch after punch at the Dark Archer as she cries with rage, and Nyssa lets out a sob that sends shooting pains through her chest. The sounds of combat hit in a roar, and Nyssa turns her head to see Merlyn and his assassins fleeing under attack from the Legends of Tomorrow, who have apparently expanded since Nyssa was lost in time.   
  
"Firestorm, make sure none of them circle around!" orders a stern but not unkind new voice, and Nyssa tries to sit up, only to get pushed back down by gentle hands. "Easy there. Nate! We've got three here that need medical--this one first, she's dying!"   
  
"Don't worry about me," Nyssa gasps. "Wanrong and Yuko, Yuko's giving birth..."   
  
"We're on it," the voice promises, its owner leaning over Nyssa with a gentle smile. She's a fit blonde like Sara, but with longer, wavy hair, and looks taller--from this angle anyway. Nyssa could get lost in her eyes for hours, though none compare to Sara's, of course. "Are you Nyssa? Sara's Nyssa?"   
  
"Yes," Nyssa confirms. "Thank you for coming to my aid." A man made of gleaming steel steps around Nyssa and picks up Wanrong as the dying Empress coughs up blood.   
  
"I'll take care of her, Ava--GIDEON, I'm coming in through the time courier, we've got a patient in critical condition!"   
  
"Who--" Nyssa asks in confusion.   
  
"It's been a couple of years for us," the woman--Ava--explains with a regretful look. "Sara had GIDEON looking for you at every spare moment." She looks up and shouts to someone Nyssa can't see. "Sara! Pull back, don't get overextended!"   
  
"Ava," Nyssa says as clearly as she can, through a broken rib and shooting pain in her leg. "We were trying to reach India through Nepal."   
  
"We'll evacuate you all--GARY! Get me twenty men for evac, now! Temporal refugees incoming, women and children, prep the quarantine and medical chambers. Firestorm, Heatwave, Captain Cold, cover our retreat!" Ava looks down to Nyssa again with another gentle smile, and Sara trots up, hair falling wild around her red face, eyes bright and  _alive_ , so gloriously alive that Nyssa would weep if she wasn't already crying.   
  
"Nys," Sara greets her, her infectious grin sweeping aside the remnants of her rage at the fleeing Merlyn in an instant as she drops to her knees by Nyssa's side. "Hey there,  _habibti_."   
  
"Hey yourself," Nyssa manages around her broken rib. "I may have trouble walking. Broken rib."   
  
"Sshhh, don't talk with busted ribs, Nys," Sara murmurs, cupping Nyssa's face in her hands as her eyes glisten with tears of joy. "Oh god, I thought I'd lost you." She kisses Nyssa full on the lips, and it's a single transcendent moment that seems like it lasts forever.   
  
Nyssa hears the intake of breath from Ava, though she tries to hide it. The Demon's Daughter looks over as Sara pulls back, and Ava can't hide the hurt in time.   
  
_Oh_. Nyssa swallows, her joy tempered. Sara has moved on.  _A couple of years_. She feels fresh tears brimming up.   
  
"Nys?" Sara asks. "Are you OK?"   
  
"I missed you," Nyssa chokes out. "I am sorry. It was a month for me."   
  
Nyssa can see every step of Sara's realization in agonizing detail. She reaches up to stroke Sara's nonresponsive face as Ava's people arrive through a sizzling rift in space, crouching down to help Ava move Nyssa gently onto a stretcher.   
  
"Medical, now," Ava orders, brushing a strand of Nyssa's hair behind her ear. "Nyssa, I know we just met, but you can trust me, it's going to be OK."   
  
It won't be. It can't be. Not with Sara still so clearly in love with her--and another. But she appreciates Ava's optimism nonetheless.   
***  
_January 2019._  
  
"So," Ava says, sitting on her side of the bed.  _Her_  bed. God, Sara is so fucked, she and Ava have their sides of Ava's bed.   
  
"So," Sara echoes her.   
  
"You love Nyssa."   
  
"I..." Sara chokes on her words. "I..."   
  
"It's OK," Ava rasps. "I could tell. I'm not upset." She clears her throat. "Look. Sara. I know...I shouldn't have pursued you..."   
  
"Hey, you weren't..."   
  
"Fine. I shouldn't have let you seduce me so easily. Whatever. But, Sara--I won't make you choose between Nyssa and me." Ava licks her lips, preparing to force it out.   
  
"Please don't say it," Sara whimpers.   
  
"Sara, you know that--"   
  
"Please," Sara begs, dropping to her knees and clasping Ava's hands in hers. "I just got something like stability. I don't...I won't leave you alone."   
  
" _Sara_ \--"   
  
" _Please_."   
  
"Sara, she needs you, too! And  _you_  love her, don't try to deny it!"   
  
Sara looks away. Licks her lips. Nods. "Yeah. I love her. But that doesn't mean I don't love you, too. Because I  _do_ , Ava. I love you so much it hurts, I love you so much it scares the crap out of me, because the only person I've ever loved this much..." She chokes on it, sucks in a breath, her body shaking uncontrollably. "...is Nyssa." Sara sniffles, wiping an arm over her eyes to clear them. "I would've married you, damn it. You and me, I was ready to go all the way. Still am."   
  
Ava wishes she could believe it, and part of her  _does_ , but the voice at the back of her head is telling her,  _she just wanted a replacement girlfriend, Sexy Ava and Caring Ava, whatever perfect little real-doll you are this week, cloned to be used, nothing you have is real_. It's a cruel, nasty little thing that lurks in her subconscious, but right now, she's just scared and shaken up enough to let it out.   
  
"Just...We need some space," Ava rasps. "Both of us. Take some time. Talk to Nyssa. I'll..." She can't get  _I'll be here_  out.   
  
" _Ava_ ," Sara whispers.   
  
"We need this," Ava insists. "All of us." She stands, and Sara slumps back on her heels, sobbing softly. Ava keeps her walk as steady as she can as she heads for the door, breath coming shaky and ragged, forcing herself not to give into temptation and return to Sara.   
  
She doesn't look back.   
***  
Nyssa's beloved comes to her as she's sitting up in bed for the first time since arriving at the Time Bureau.   
  
"Hey, you," Sara says from the doorway, her easy grin not hiding the eyes red from weeping.   
  
"Sara," Nyssa greets her with a restrained smile. "How have you been?" She wants to add  _habibti_ , wants to express her love with endearment, but she forces it down.   
  
"We've made it through," Sara rasps, slouching closer, hands in her pockets. "How long were you stranded?"   
  
"About a month." Nyssa grins ruefully. "You rubbed off on me, Sara. I foiled an attempt by two of my father's men on refugees from Manchuria. Two women, consorts of the puppet Emperor. They were innocents, but my father would not have seen them as such."   
  
"Well, he can't hurt you anymore," Sara reassures her, clasping Nyssa's wiry hand in her own muscular ones. "What about the others?"   
  
Nyssa's breath catches. "The Japanese regime had lost touch with reality. Members of their military who could not evacuate were killing women and children--their own women and children." She shakes her head with a grimace, Sara going pale as she grips Nyssa's arm more tightly. "I rescued about ten, we escaped, with the children." She chuckles, though it hurts still. "Stole an airplane, if you can believe that."   
  
"Mmh, learned something from my band of rogues?" Sara teases, though her eyes are still red and uncertain.   
  
"Well, it got me to southern Qinghai with my refugees, so it was definitely worth it for more than just your lovely company," Nyssa flirts back in spite of herself. Sara huffs out a single genuine chuckle at that.   
  
"God, I missed you, baby."   
  
Nyssa cups Sara's face in her free hand, and the blonde's breath catches now. "And I you, my beloved."   
  
Sara grips Nyssa's hand against her face, breathing hard and fast. "Nyssa...baby..."   
  
"I apologize," Nyssa says, pulling back. "I should not have..."   
  
"Ava dumped me," Sara admits.   
  
" _What_? Why that hussy--"   
  
"Well, not  _dumped_  dumped," Sara clarifies hastily. "She said we need some space. Because you're back. And...Nys..." She gulps, and Nyssa can't look away. "I don't know how to say this, Nyssa. I love her."   
  
It burns Nyssa's heart into a cinder to hear it, and it hurts more to say what comes next, but she  _must_  do it for Sara's sake. "I will step aside--"   
  
"No, wait," Sara cuts her off. "Babe--damn it, why is this so goddamn hard to say? I love you, too. I don't get it, I don't know how to explain it. But I love her, and I love you, and I want to be there for you and her and I don't know what to do!"   
  
Nyssa bites back a sob, her eyes blurring from tears. "Sara--you do not need to lie to me--" But part of her objects, she stops, she remembers the way Sara cradled her head in Tibet, the kiss that was as real and passionate as any they've ever had.   
  
It's too late. "I'm not lying!" Sara shouts, pulling back and leaping to her feet. " _Fuck_ , why does this have to be so hard? I don't know how to say this, but I want to be yours. And Ava's. And I know this probably makes me even more of a slut than I already am, but god, Nys--I don't know how else to put it." She shakes her head, turning away as she presses her palms to her temples. "I can't do this right now. I just can't."   
  
"Sara--" Nyssa tries.   
  
"Stop," Sara chokes out, wiping more tears from her eyes. "Just stop. You and Ava and your noble self-sacrificing crap. I don't know what's wrong with me, but this isn't helping." She heads for the door. "I'm going out."   
  
"Sara-- _beloved_!" Nyssa calls, and Sara stops in the door, half-turning. "Where are you going?" the assassin manages through her tears.   
  
"I don't know," Sara rasps.   
  
Nyssa wants to ask  _when will you be back_ , but it doesn't make it past the lump in her throat.   
  
After a moment, and a last longing look at Nyssa, Sara turns out the door and is gone.   
  
Two hours later, she steals Gary Green's new time-courier, one so new it hasn't even been logged into the network so it can be tracked. Ava Sharpe brings Nyssa the bad news.   
  
The worst part, Nyssa finds, is that Ava's sobbing hug is as satisfying as one of Sara's. Not the same. Ava is taller and slimmer, with a more angular form than Sara's flowing curves, and her hug is over the shoulders and off-center where Sara prefers to crush the middle of the ribcage with her firm, strong arms as she leans her cheek along the midline of her lover's torso.   
  
But though it is different, the comfort and spike of something else, something dangerously  _more_ , is still there.   
***  
_April 2019_.   
  
"Any sign?" Ava asks as Nyssa enters the kitchen. With Ava benched from the Time Bureau due to a compound fracture of her arm that even the Bureau's technology takes a while to properly repair, Nyssa has taken over her duties as a field agent for the past week as Nate handles the Director parts.   
  
"No," Nyssa says, as she has every single day for the past week. She sets her briefcase down with a sigh; the woman they both love is nowhere to be found and the Bureau can't track her. Her voice cracks. "I've asked the Legends. Heatwave had a few leads, but he was drunk."   
  
"Better check them out anyway," Ava manages, taking a swig of a beer. She's two-thirds of the way through a six-pack, which is better than she was at the beginning of the week.   
  
"They took the  _Waverider_  out," Nyssa confirms. She sits next to Ava, craving the other woman's presence.  _I need support. We need support, and are convenient for each other. That is all that this is._  They've been living together for months out of sheer convenience, after all.   
  
"Good," Ava says, then offers the beer to Nyssa. "Beer?"   
  
Nyssa eyes it, then sighs. It might help. "Very well."   
  
They trade the drink back and forth in silence for a few minutes, careful not to touch. Their shoulders are a mere quarter-inch apart. Nyssa can hear Ava's shaky breathing and knows that the reverse is true.   
  
The space between them feels electric, neither of them quite wanting to reach across. The unspoken  _thing_  between them that isn't Sara, increasingly  _obviously_  isn't their mutual lover, hanging in the air like an anchor, weighing down every conversation...  
  
"She told me she loves both of us," Ava says, startling Nyssa out of her thoughts.   
  
"She told me the same," Nyssa admits.   
  
"Yeah," Ava rasps. "Yeah. She needed answers. Not space. I drove her away."   
  
" _I_  drove her away," Nyssa counters.   
  
"We both did."   
  
"...yes," whispers Nyssa.   
  
"I love her  _so much_ ," Ava continues.   
  
"I know precisely what you mean," Nyssa murmurs. She takes a drink. "I always loved her smile."   
  
"Her hugs give that a run for its money!"   
  
"Oh, yes! But her  _laugh_..."   
  
Ava nods along. "Her laugh, it was something else. The real laugh, when she was happy."   
  
"Always so full of joy."   
  
"God, she made me forget about the whole clone thing."   
  
"She made me forget about the League, my tarnished soul, the blood on my hands, all of it."   
  
"We'll get her back," Ava vows.   
  
"Agreed," Nyssa concurs.   
  
Then Ava's good hand is on Nyssa's, and the assassin freezes.   
  
"I like your smile, too," Ava whispers. Nyssa turns sharply, looking into her terrified eyes with shock written plain as day on her face, but Ava continues, licking her lips. "I think...I think I might like you the way I like Sara. I like it when you smile and I like it when you laugh, and I like being here for you and hugging you and all of it. I think I love you, Nysssa. And not just in a supportive way. In a way like the way I love Sara."   
  
Nyssa can't breathe. Ava holds her hand in a trembling one of her own, and Nyssa can't even twitch. After what seems like an eternity, Ava pulls back and looks away.   
  
"Oh god, I'm sorry, I'm probably sounding like an idiot--"   
  
"I think I love you, as well," Nyssa murmurs. Ava freezes. Turns, slowly. Nyssa gives her a hopeful smile, baring her soul to the taller woman; in all her years of sword fights, arrows, and general madness, Nyssa has never once been so vulnerable.   
  
They lean into each other as if through gravity, Ava's good hand reaching up behind Nyssa to push her head closer as Nyssa gently wraps her arms around the blonde, their lips meeting in a long, slow, gentle kiss as their bodies turn into each other. Ava's lips are thin and firm, not as plump or soft as Sara's, but Nyssa wouldn't trade the kiss for anything. In fact...it feels like kissing Sara. The details are different, the shape of the woman in her arms is different, but somehow Nyssa still gets the same joy, the same warmth, the same knowledge that she is loved.   
  
Finally, they break apart, panting. Ava is the first to speak.   
  
"Wow."   
  
"Indeed," Nyssa manages.   
  
"I think I get what Sara meant now."   
  
Nyssa has no response other than a wide-eyed nod.   
***  
Loving Nyssa is different from loving Sara. Where Sara burns with endless love that pours from her with ease, Nyssa needs to have it coaxed out of her, but it's all the sweeter for it. Sara is comfortable with sex but uses it to hide from the intimacy she simultaneously craves and is a little bit afraid of; Nyssa needs a little coaxing but once that's done she's nothing  _but_  intimacy, soft and warm and protective and gentle like nobody Ava's ever met.   
  
Ava is smitten. Even her guilt over Sara can't stop her from indulging in her new status quo. She and Nyssa have dinner in Paris in the 1920s, kiss on a mountaintop after stopping a rogue League member with access to a Lazarus pit, make gentle love and sleep in a bed on the  _Titanic_ , watch the premiere of a Marlene Dietrich movie in the hopes that Sara will attend as the actress's plus one (Marlene Dietrich, Sara had told both Nyssa and Ava at various points, was Sara's secret celebrity crush) with no luck, and a thousand other romantic things. They discuss their love for Sara, and every day only hardens their resolve to find her and coax her back.   
  
Both Nyssa and Ava have more than enough love for two. Sara, who has enough for...well, more than either can fathom, really, Sara at her core is an extrovert and filled with a boundless capacity for love--Sara deserves to be loved back as ferociously as she has loved the two of them.   
  
Finally, after months of searching, an interrogation by Leonard Snart of a drunken Heatwave extracts one last possible lead...


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And now we have the real-life Sara Lance hanging out with Sara Lance. 
> 
> And a wedding. Everybody needs a nice gay wedding!

_Paris, 1700 AD_.   
  
The tall, auburn-haired woman scans the tavern with piercing blue eyes as she enters, the proprietor scurrying up to greet her. Not that he needs to, her quarry is rather obvious.   
  
" _Mademoiselle_  la Maupin! Oh, thank goodness you're here--it's  _la canarie_ , she's challenged five men to duels of  _fisticuffs_!"   
  
Julie d'Aubigny, not quite thirty years of age and already more experienced than some septuagenarians, better known to the adoring crowds of Paris as  _La Maupin_ , whistles appreciatively. That beats her record, for certain. "Thank you, Francois--I will take my co-star from here."   
  
"Please make haste,  _mademoiselle_ , she attempted to seduce the son of the  _comte_  du Rochambeau  _and_  his betrothed! She even  _kissed_  the girl in full view of the  _comte_ 's son, and then kissed  _him_  in a most unseemly way!"   
  
"I shall deal with it at once," Julie promises again, sliding easily through the packed room with one hand on her rapier. Ahead, she sees the lush blonde locks of her friend, drinking companion, and self-proclaimed time traveler, as Sara Lance forces a burly man's arm down to the surface of a table to the cheers of her audience.   
  
" _Yeah!_ " Sara shouts in her strange dialect of English. " _How'd'you like that?!_ " She waves to a serving-maid, blearily staring at the girl's cleavage as she switches back to the King's French. "Hey, babe, get me another round, will you?"  
  
"I think you've had quite enough," Julie cuts in, clamping a hand on Sara's shoulder. Much as she would like to join in the fun herself, she can't have her co-star showing up drunk and covered in someone else's blood to the premiere of  _Les Legendes de Demain_ , the scandalous new opera that  _Madame_  Gillot de Saintogne wrote recently based on the blonde's tales of time-travel. Especially since Julie is in the lead role of Sara, and Sara is playing the other lead, the Demon's Daughter (and isn't having two sopranos leading the piece whipping up debate, not to mention having the popular Jean Dun sing the supporting role of the Black Jew-Doctor _Feu-Tempete_  as a  _hero_  of all things?). "You are to sing for all of Paris tomorrow night, little bird, and you can't do that if you've been thrown in the gaol for public drunkenness! What will my lady the Marquise de Florensac think? Or  _Madame_  Gillot de Saintogne? She wrote this opera specifically for us!"   
  
"Fuck, Julie, if you wanna impress your babe the Marquise, just fuck her on a gondola with some fireworks," Sara slurs. "I don'wanna do the song and dance, OK?"   
  
"Sara, we've planned this for  _months_ ," Julie sighs, pulling the drunken blonde from her seat with some difficulty. Julie is tall and fit, with a duelist's wiry muscles, but though Sara is shorter she's also a coiled spring of honed physical power, an even match for  _La Maupin_  if there ever was one. "Thirteen rehearsals, six drunken conversations, four sober, and no less than  _three_  promises extracted from you by myself,  _Madame_  Gillot de Saintogne, and my lady de Florensac! You can't just leave now, who will sing the Demon's Daughter?"   
  
"Not me," Sara insists. "You can play me all y'like, but I can't do Nyssa. She's...she's perfect. Well not perfect perfect but all I need perfect, you know? Her and Ava. Fuck, Julie, I'm such a slut."   
  
Julie scoffs as she hauls the blonde out into the road, Sara's undershirt stained with beer where it pokes from under her waistcoat and outer coat; like Julie, Sara prefers men's fashion. "If you are such a vulgar thing, little bird, then what am I?" She's settled down a bit since her brief exile to Brussels and her recent relationship with the Marquise de Florensac, but Julie d'Aubigny is  _infamous_  across France for a reason. "I burned down a convent to sleep with a nun, for God's sake!"   
  
"No, I mean...that's  _sex_ ," Sara complains. "Little shit. One-night stands. Not meant to be permanent. I had lots of those. But this--I  _love_  them, Jules. Both've 'em."   
  
"So?" Julie doesn't really see the problem here; neither she nor Sara, the both of them voracious bisexuals, are exactly bastions of prim and proper normal marital morality. "Did you tell them? Or did you bed them both at the same time without telling them?"   
  
"No, I was with Nys first. But, she got lost'n time." Sara stumbles, and Julie barely keeps her upright. "Years I'd lost her. I met Ava. An' I love Ava, too. I love'em both, Jules, want'em both, makes no sense."   
  
"So you met Nyssa first, then after she was missing for a few years you met Ava and fell in love with her?"   
  
"Yeah," Sara confirms, sniffling loudly as Julie stops to reposition the blonde with one arm over Julie's shoulders. "I love'em both. I sorta cheated on Nyssa by bein' with Ava but Nys didn't care, an' that hurt. I'm such a slut."   
  
"And what is so wrong about loving them both?" Julie challenges, then cuts Sara off before she can reply. "No, wait, allow me to explain. Neither of us hold that traditional relationships are the be-all and end-all of what is right and wrong. God, I fucked a  _nun_ , Sara. So why can't you have a different sort of marriage, too? If you have enough love for two women in your heart--why not embrace it? Unless they demand you choose one, what is there to lose?"   
  
"I  _can't_  choose one 'f'em," Sara slurs. "Perfect. Both perfect. All I need."   
  
"What is life without risk?" Julie counters with a laugh. "Besides. You will solve nothing by getting drunk. Come, little bird! Sing the Demon's Daughter tomorrow and then we shall talk with clear heads, aye?"   
  
" _...fine_ ," Sara complains after a moment. "Th'beer back there's like horse piss, anyway."   
***  
" _La Maupin_  was the talk of the town," Nate explains eagerly as the Legends slip into the theater, wearing extravagant gilt outfits of patterned primary colors. "They said she was 'beautiful, valiant, generous, and supremely unchaste'."   
  
"That sounds like Sara," Ava mutters.   
  
"Right, but this woman existed  _before_  the aberration," Nate continues. "She  _is_  the kind of person who Sara would hang out with, though. Especially considering Salem."   
  
Nyssa has heard in great detail about what Sara did in Salem. Starting a Satanic lesbian freethinker movement is...  
  
Well, it is very  _Sara_.   
  
"Let's just get the boss and get out," Mick growls. "I hate this stupid monkey suit!"   
  
"Aww, and deny us this image?" Leonard snarks, gesturing to the entire awkward picture of Mick dressed like a baroque princeling, with a ruffled silk undershirt partially covered by a velvet waistcoat and buttoned, embroidered purple coat proper, a magnificent curly white wig adorning the pyromaniac's bald head. Mick merely growls in disgruntled response.   
  
"Shh!" Nate and Ray hiss from the front of the pack. "This is an original de Saintogne and Desmarets production!" Nate continues. "Two sopranos leading,  _no_  opera of this period has that!"   
  
Nyssa and Ava push forward, away from the bickering criminal manchildren at the back of the pack, and emerge up into the theater proper. The sight takes Nyssa's breath away.   
  
The stage has been transformed into a semblance of a sailing ship, but with harsh silver angles and the phrase  _Coureur de Vague_ \--"rider of waves",  _Waverider_ \--emblazoned in crimson halfway up the wall. On stage, a striking auburn-haired woman with piercing blue eyes sings an aria in perfect soprano tones, her dulcet voice weaving a tale of a sister held prisoner by a wicked sorcerer as she struts around in an androgynous outfit with an open coat and flamboyant flared trousers. She cries out for aid from her companions--and Nyssa realizes that  _these are the Legends_ , as the woman sings of the "Black Jew-Doctor with hands of fire" (a trifle racist, but Nyssa supposes that it  _is_  the start of the 18th century), the " _Chevalier_  Raymond of the Palms", two "noble Musketeers and reformed criminals with hearts of ice and fire", and finally, her "beloved one, brave and selfless and true"...  
  
Nyssa and Ava grasp each other's hands unconsciously as they see the actress playing the "beloved one"--it's Sara, her hair flowing lush around her shoulders as she strides forward to take the soprano's hands, her own mouth opening for an adoring duet as the other woman gazes down at her with a dopey smile reaching her electric blue eyes...  
  
 _Who is this hussy, anyway?_  Nyssa and Ava need to teach her a thing or two.   
  
Sara calls the other woman  _Lady Sara, my beloved, owner of my heart_  and the other woman calls Nyssa's beloved  _My lovely Nyssa, daughter of the Demon and owner of half my heart_. The music reaches a grand crescendo, the two women sing together as the crowd sucks in a collective breath...  
  
And they kiss, the auburn-haired woman throwing herself into it with gusto, and the music  _crashes_  to a halt, and Ava pulls Nyssa close as the assassin feels tears in her eyes, and the curtains close on the auburn-haired soprano claiming Nyssa and Ava's woman for her own.   
  
The cheers, applause, gasps of shock, and scattered boos of hecklers nearly bring down the house.   
  
"Wow," Jefferson Jackson says from somewhere on Nyssa's right as the audience quiets down. "'Black Jew-Doctor', are we, Grey?"   
  
"Yes, this period of European history was still rife with religious conflicts and the beginning of racial conflicts," Professor Stein replies. "Still, at least we seem to be a heroic figure, though perhaps controversially so."   
  
The rest of the debate is irrelevant, and Nyssa hears none of it as she pulls Ava off towards the exit. "I saw the way to the backstage as we entered," Nyssa tells her lover as they trot down a flight of stairs. "We shall get to the bottom of this at once!"   
  
"I can't believe it," Ava mutters. "Did she move on already? That kiss looked  _really_...well...real. For the other woman, at least."   
  
"If it wasn't, that hussy certainly seemed to be trying to  _make_  it real," Nyssa hisses, burning with jealousy. "Come, we will settle this the honorable way."   
  
"You go ahead, I'll..." But Nyssa has a firm grip on Ava's hand as the blonde tries to pull back, and pulls them up against each other with one fluid movement.   
  
"No. You are coming with me, Ava. We will get Sara back, and prove to her that  _you_  are the only Ava that she needs." She kisses Ava full on the lips, and Ava responds unconsciously, one hand coming up to cup Nyssa's cheek. "Am I clear?" Nyssa murmurs as they split apart.   
  
"Crystal," Ava whispers. Invigorated,  _she_  takes the lead as they stride backstage, both armed with period-appropriate rapiers as well as modern weaponry.   
  
Several stage-hands see them as they enter, and one attempts to interrupt their course, but Nyssa sidesteps him and trips him into a burst hay-stuffed mattress, her eyes never leaving the pair up ahead. Sara and the blue-eyed hussy are off to the side of the curtained-off part of the stage, the other woman laughing uproariously as she pats a ruefully chuckling Sara on the back. Nyssa sees red.   
  
" _Take your hands off our woman, you...you inconsiderate baboon!_ " She slaps the auburn-haired woman full on the cheek, Ava swinging a punch that the reeling soprano barely dodges.   
  
"Hey! What the--"   
  
"What--" Sara exclaims. "Nys! Ava! No, wait, don't hurt her!"   
  
"Sara, I don't know who she is," Ava begins, "but Nyssa and I won't stand for some random bitch kissing you--"   
  
" _She's my co-star!_ " Sara throws her hands up in the air as Nyssa and Ava freeze under the sudden gaze of the entire troupe, the blue-eyed woman stepping forwards with a hand on her rapier hilt. "It's an opera! She's playing me, sort of, and I'm playing Nyssa, kind of. God damn it! How did you even  _find_  me?"   
  
"This play is a bit of an anachronism," Ava points out. "What with the whole  _Waverider_ , time-ship thing."   
  
"...OK, point," Sara admits. "But still--"   
  
"Who even  _are_  you? Are you her lovers?" the blue-eyed woman demands. "Have you  _any_  idea how many irresponsible things Sara has done while pining for you? She seduced the  _comte_  de Rochambeau's son,  _and_  the boy's fiancee, and kissed them both in front of each other! In public! Even  _I_  have never done something so scandalous, and I once had to run away to Brussels after I dueled three men over the hand of a lady at a ball!"   
  
"Uh," Ava manages.   
  
"We--" Nyssa attempts.   
  
" _And furthermore,_ " the singer snaps, her turquoise eyes flashing as she glares at Nyssa, "you have the  _nerve_  to challenge me in front of the entire troupe,  _in the middle of the opera_? We need to be back on stage in fifteen minutes!"   
  
"I challenge you because we are here to reaffirm our love for Sara, and to give her the love that she deserves!" Nyssa snaps right back, hand going to her rapier. "If you would claim her, then fight for her, singing hussy!"   
  
" _Nyssa!_ " Sara hisses.   
  
"If you want to be thrashed so badly, then so be it!" the blue-eyed woman retorts, drawing her blade. " _En garde!_ "   
  
" _Julie!_ " Sara groans.   
  
She knows she shouldn't, but Nyssa is running hot on jealousy and a need to prove herself to Sara, and so reacts in a way more befitting a drunk teenage boy than a grown woman--though to be fair, Julie is acting the same way. "With pleasure!" Nyssa pulls her own rapier out with lightning speed, and the duel begins.   
  
Nyssa opens by parrying Julie's first thrust, then going for the woman's shoulder, but Julie deflects her with impressive agility, leaning back and sweeping Nyssa's sword aside, then forcing Nyssa to backstep with a thrust. Nyssa responds with a swift assault that drives the other woman back, right up against the curtain, but this Julie is more used to the rapier than Nyssa, who prefers the sweeping strokes of a scimitar, and Nyssa rolls aside to avoid another jab. She strikes back, and Julie catches her rapier between blade and crossguard. They struggle, Nyssa lashes out with a leg, Julie trips, falls, brings Nyssa with her right into the curtain. Something  _snaps_ , a cord of some kind, and the curtain collapses as Nyssa and Julie rise to resume their fight, the remaining members of the audience gasping in shock.   
  
" _La Maupin_  is dueling some woman on the stage!" cries a man in the audience, and there's a tide of noise as suddenly  _everybody_  wants to be in the front row.   
  
"How could you abandon Sara?" Julie shouts as she parries another thrust from Nyssa, Sara pleading for the duelists to stop as Ava halfheartedly agrees. "Do you truly love her?"   
  
"I love her more than anything!" Nyssa shoots back. "She and Ava each own half of my soul, and Ava and I have been searching for Sara for  _months_!"   
  
"Then why abandon her?"   
  
"We did not abandon her, she ran away! I told her that that I would step aside for her to be with Ava, and she fled!" There are cheers from the audience as Nyssa barely blocks a strike from Julie, the duel moving lightning-fast up and down the stage.   
  
"Of all the--Why step aside? Sara loves you both!"   
  
"That's why we're here!" Ava cries. Julie and Nyssa stop with their swords crossed, Ava pulling a wide-eyed Sara out onto the stage. "Now look, Sara, I know this is weird, and I know Nyssa and I being together is even more so, but  _fuck_ , when was the last time any of us was  _normal_? If we can stop the Vikings from conquering America in the name of Beebo the god of war, if we can fight demons and misplaced Roman dictators and Vandal Savage, we can give  _us_  a try, right?"   
  
There's silence, Sara looking wide-eyed and tearful between the wide-eyed Nyssa and red-cheeked Ava. Finally, she speaks.   
  
"... _us_?" Sara croaks. "Like, all three of us,  _us_? And you're not mad that I love you both?"   
  
Ava lets out a strangled laugh. "Oh, Sara, I'm mad as hell, but not because you love Nyssa as well as me. I love Nyssa too, damn it, and she loves both of us right back. I'm  _mad_  because you ran off and left the two of us losing our minds trying to find you!"   
  
"Nys?" Sara whispers. The entire audience is holding their breath. Nyssa wets her lips and manages a single nod.   
  
"If you'll have us," she says. "We'll be yours as well as each others, if you'll have us. Even if you won't--we love you."   
  
There's another moment, a heart-stopping moment where Nyssa has no idea what Sara will do, and then the shorter blonde is pulling Ava forwards and they  _crash_  into Nyssa, who drops her rapier as Julie steps back, Sara pulling Nyssa and Ava into a bone-crushing hug.   
  
" _I missed you_ ," Sara rasps.   
  
Ava tips her face up with a finger, and Nyssa and Ava lean in to press soft kisses to each of Sara's cheeks. Someone in the audience starts clapping as Sara kisses Nyssa, then Ava, then squeezes them again. Another person adds to the clapping, then another, and another, and within seconds the theater is roaring their approval. Even Julie, as Nyssa looks up briefly from nuzzling her shorter beloved's hair, has sheathed her rapier and applauds with a brilliant smile.   
  
And for the first time in her life, Nyssa al Ghul is at peace.   
***  
 _Now_.   
  
Julie, after clarifying to Nyssa that the duel was just a ploy to get Nyssa to confess her feelings, and that Julie already has a girlfriend who she's quite happy with, agreed to be Nyssa's maid of honor, and brought her girlfriend to be Ava's, on the condition that Professor Stein (the only Legend who's actually bothered to get qualified to marry people, even if it was via the Internet) marries Julie and her Marquise after Sara and her girls are done. (Sara knows that the duelist stole a medkit and looked up her and the Marquise de Florensac's futures on GIDEON's database, but Sara also can't bring herself to care so long as Julie doesn't screw up history too much) Sara, thanks to her trip to stop Damien Darhk a few years ago, has the perfect bridesmaid already.   
  
"You look good," Laurel says, resting her chin on Sara's shoulder from behind as the younger sister takes in the white suit in the mirror.   
  
"Yeah," Sara chuckles. "Yeah, I do. God, I can't believe I'm finally doing this."   
  
"I wish I could say the same," Laurel replies with a grin, straightening to check her dress for wrinkles. "You make a lovely bride, Sara."   
  
"Thanks, sis. What do you mean you wish you could say the same?"   
  
Laurel rolls her eyes. "Sara, the moment you told me you'd accepted the offer to go off through time, and were bringing Nyssa, I knew you and her were serious. And after you showed up with Ava to help me convince my doppelganger to surrender and try to reform..."   
  
"Ok, fair," Sara concedes. "But both of them?"   
  
Laurel shrugs. "Felicity and I are basically co-parenting Oliver's kid since Ollie keeps getting abducted by supervillains, overly obsessed with job minutiae, personally leading every mission, nearly getting sent to prison...it's been a long few years. Ollie still hasn't popped the question, Felicity's still in limbo, Roy and Thea left to go hunt down Lazarus pits, Curtis's husband divorced him, Rene is trying to get custody of his daughter back, really the only person on the team with a stable marriage is Diggle, and even then he and Lyla haven't seen much of each other in years because of complicated legal stuff with the FBI. So, yeah, I basically gave up on having anything approaching a normal family years ago, so it's easy to accept whatever you've got now."   
  
"Wow." Sara shakes her head with a grin. "Fair enough. You good there?"   
  
"As I'll ever be," Laurel sighs, clearly regretting wearing a shiny green formal gown with ruffles. "Are  _you_  ready?"   
  
"Ha! Oh, never," Sara admits with a nervous laugh. "But I want this more than anything."   
  
"That's a good place to be."   
  
The greatest challenge, it turns out, is remembering to pay attention to the ceremony when Ava and Nyssa are so distracting. Yes, Nyssa's wedding dress is a bit complicated and undoubtedly was Hell to put on, and Ava finally gave up after months of agonizing and just wore a normal nice outfit like Sara half-jokingly suggested, but they're both so freakishly beautiful that Sara really just wants to carry them both off and have her way with them, instead of sitting through the Professor giving the Cliff's Notes version of their romantic history as he gets around to the actual important words. In fact, Sara actually  _misses_  the damn things (thanks to a fantasy of treating her girls to a vacation in Aruba) until Ava and Nyssa elbow her.   
  
"Huh? Oh, right. I do. I do a thousand times, god I love you two."   
  
A ripple of laughter flows through the assembled Legends, vigilantes, and superheroes (Barry and Wally couldn't make it, something involving the Reverse-Flash and dimension-jumping, but they promised to make it for the reception with apology gift baskets), and Ava and Nyssa blush. Stein can't quite keep the chuckle out of his voice as he continues.   
  
"Well then, since we're all so enthusiastic about it, I pronounce you wife, wife, and wife. You may kiss the brides!"   
  
Everybody applauds, but Sara only has eyes and ears for her wives as Ava and Nyssa kiss, then trade kisses with her. They lean into each other, just breathing each other in as their foreheads rest together, and the audience lets out a cheer, even Heatwave and Captain Cold.   
  
Then the door bursts open, and Sara spins around, releasing her wives. A flood of HIVE goons floods in--what the Hell? Didn't they get shut down?--followed by a smirking blond man in a suit.   
  
"Well, well, well, Ms. Lance--uh..." Damien Darhk falters as he sees the room full of superheroes as every single person in the room except for Sara, including Julie _and_ her girlfriend the Marquise, alternately draws a weapon or engages their superpowers.   
  
Sara sighs, and reaches into her back pocket to grab her phone and quickly activate her speed dial. She really has so many better things--and two much better  _people_ \--to do than fighting Damien Darhk  _again_ , at her wedding of all places.   
***  
And that, dear reader, is how three gay idiots found each other thanks to a drunken pyromaniac felon and a magical book. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Julie "La Maupin" d'Aubigny was a flamboyantly bisexual, aggressively promiscuous badass and gay disaster (she once even tried to commit suicide after being rejected by another woman, and lived for several years in a committed relationship with a Marquise, after whose death she was inconsolable and died shortly after) who liked dueling young noblemen for the hands of young ladies (and lips, and...well, you know), singing in the opera, seducing nuns, burning down convents to seduce nuns, and otherwise being Sara Lance before Sara Lance was even a character concept. 
> 
> Seriously, look her up. La Maupin was a badass.


End file.
